During this week of class, the concept of ethics and morals was thoroughly discussed and applied to different situations. To me, ethics is a difficult and sometimes confusing subject because it addresses how society tackles issues of conflict. I think it is important to understand that there are multiple factors that one has to consider when judging others morals. It is hard to say that someone has bad morals when their culture or religion has taught them those core values and views. At the same time, who is given the power to decide what is right and what is wrong? And what gives them the authority? For example, when we were reading The Bicentennial Man, humans thought that they should have full control over robots and were hesitant to give them rights. I think this was because as a species, it is natural for humans to yearn for superiority. We feel like we need to be in control because we are all fearful of something that will take our place. We are used to being at the top of the chain. We consider ourselves as the most intelligent species on earth because we have dominated by building, industrializing, and marking it as our planet. We are hesitant to share it with others, even among ourselves. Our competitive and selfish nature has proven to be beneficial, but I also think there are some downfalls. It is a very efficient way to isolate ourselves. There is an undertone of racism in The Bicentennial Man seen through the discrimination towards robots. One example is the color of their “skin”. The robots do not wear clothes and their metallic “skin” is fully exposed. Once Andrew realized that people wore clothes, he wanted to as well in order to fit in and assimilate with the human society. But, we have shown that we are often close-minded to things that differentiate from us. We are quite stubborn because we are afraid of change. We are afraid of the threat it might have and how it might alter our system of living.
The ethical dilemma in the situation of allowing robots to have rights is how are we to expect progress in a technological world if we are denying the fact that robots should not have the freedom to be conscious individuals? It seems as if we are stopping ourselves from accepting a world where humans are not at the top of the chain. This scares us because humans have always had the power and it does not seem right to transfer that power to something else. We would feel insufficient and worthless.
But what if it would create benefits for us? In most science fiction movies, robots are often portrayed as going rogue and ending up wanting to kill the human race. My view on that is that is their only a natural response because they are so constrained. It only proves that they have very humanistic characteristics in which they feel strongly against being held against their will and being discriminated against.